


One Step Too Far Always

by taylorswift



Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF, RPF - Fandom
Genre: Divorce, F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Scarlett keeps secrets and everyone knows but the one that's mad in love with her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-24 16:14:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3775123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylorswift/pseuds/taylorswift
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just what Jeremy does; he steps over boundaries and goes too far, whether she wants for him to or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Step Too Far Always

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, another request. Surprise.

As an actor, you’re expected to be able to balance a professional career life and your personalone. Some people try to push them as far away from the other as possible, others tend to let them overlap and don’t care too much about the repercussions about it. Then you have people like Scarlett Johansson, who has a personal life so personal that she rarely includes people she knows into the loop. It’s almost like she’s two completely different people, inside and out of work. Work Scarlett is a pro at what she does, even if she likes to purposely screw up other people or joke around. Work Scarlett will kick your ass into next week and smile, waiting for you to thank her for it.  _Scarlett,_  though, is a sharp-tongued, coy, surprisingly relaxed human being who could drink the whole bar. It’s easy to confuse them, but once you’ve worked with her once, the distinctions are there.  

Work Scarlett is currently sitting across from me at the table, picking at the contents of her salad. Evans is a few spaces down from her at the banquet-designed table they’ve set up for us in some room on site at a press junket, loudly blabbering on about some childhood memory that was clearly an injustice, judging by the inflictions in his voice. My line of sight at Scarlett hasn’t broken yet, eyes narrowing as I try to figure out what the hell is up with her.

In every interview she and I have had together so far—which was just about all of them—she’s been the typical Work Scarlett, laughing and joking and throwing around sharp comments like it’s as simple as flipping the hair out of her face. Fortunately, I know Scarlett well enough to know that the minute we trade out interviewers, the veil comes down and it’s like she sighs, glad to be able to drop the act. Not once has she had her little sigh of relief; she’s been tense, her show face on. Even as she sits across from me, fork stabbing at different pieces of lettuce and making a small stack on the tines, I can tell that she’s still trying to keep it professional. Scarlett would be throwing the little croutons at Evans’ head at this point. Instead, she’s not even paying attention.

I’m not really sure what’s wrong with her, or if it’s just another day when she’s resenting the fact the majority of her company today has been sheer testosterone, but it’s beginning to bother me. I’ve been going over the possibilities of what the issue could be, and I keep drawing blanks. No interviewer has made some sexist question, no fan boys under the age of thirty who look at her like she’s a piece of steak, as far as I know no one ran over her dog; today should be a good day for her. We’re pretty much rejoicing the fact that this movie is being praised like it is. And here she is, sulking.

My foot stretches out underneath the table and I tap what I assume is her foot, nudging slightly. No response. I slide down a little further in my seat, the top of my shoe bumping up against her ankle. She glares up at me, an inevitably agitated glimmer in her eyes and a scowl over her lips. Realizing I’ve caught her attention, I lift an eyebrow and hope that our wordless language is still one she cares enough to translate. Hell, I even mouth the words ‘ _what’s wrong’_ for good measure. Instead of a response, I get the slight shake of her head and the immediate snap of her attention back to the table top.

Now it’s evident that whatever is bothering her is not something she’s interested in discussing. This should trigger the whole shutdown of my operations, but for some reason, I can’t shake the feeling that this is something I need to investigate. It’s more than just her usual don’t ask don’t tell. It’s bigger than that. I don’t have much time to resume my staring at her and trying to diagnose the problem, as something sends her straight out of her seat. Joss’ head snaps up, and she gives him a knowing look—since when did she and  _Joss_  start nonverbal communications?—to which he dismisses her, her running out of the room faster than anyone need tell her to.

The moment she steps out of the room, it’s like a weight pressing on everyone’s shoulders that I didn’t even realize was resting there is lifted. Evans leans a bit farther back in his chair, arms folding over his chest. “I hope she’s doing okay,” he mumbles, and as if I needed any more of an invitation to butt in, I lean in that direction to hear more of what he has to say. “She’s just been down lately.”

Joss sets his fork down on the table. “Can you blame her? With all of the speculation running around and the fact you all are all running on five hours of sleep at maximum, it’s no wonder.”

“Hey, boss guy, that five hour max thing was your rule.”

“I never said I was apologizing for it.”

“Speculation?” I find myself butting in, kinking an eyebrow. “About what?”

I then get the look from pretty much everyone at the table, all of them staring at me like I couldn’t be more of an idiot. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Downey pinching the bridge of his nose, letting out a long sigh. I have no idea what the big deal is. It’s not a matter of, ‘Oh, Renner wasn’t paying attention because he’s a jackass’, this time I genuinely have no idea what’s going on.

“You know, Renner, for someone who’s as obsessed with her as you happen to be, you sure do live under a pretty big rock,” Mark comments dryly. I feel the color surge through my cheeks as I sit up a little straighter, on the defensive.

“I am not  _obsessed—_ “

“He’s also a really bad liar too,” Evans interrupts.

I shake my head, trying to dispel all of their commentary from the air. “We can discuss my flaws at a later date,  _what_ speculation?” I try again, this time in a sterner tone.

“There’s talk that she’s getting another divorce.” The words out of Downey’s mouth hit me like a freight train, everyone’s eyes carefully watching for my reaction. I want to say something, act like I’ve known this all along, but the look on my face will never let me sell that load of bullshit to them. Words aren’t forming on my tongue, and I can’t muster up the strength to do so. They’re all bouncing around my head in incoherent thoughts, all of which lead back to the same road: Scarlett. At this point, I don’t care what the reason behind it is, I certainly don’t care as to the unnatural way my heart is now crashing inside of my chest. I just need to make sure she’s okay.

I leap from my seat, only to be restrained by Joss’ firm grasp on my wrist. “Whoa there Superman—“

“Wrong comic universe,” Hemsworth sings, as a means of comic relief that helps absolutely no one.

“Whedon,” I threaten, every ounce of seriousness flushing out jokey Renner. “Let me go.”

“You didn’t hear us, Jeremy, it’s only speculation,” he insists.

“There was speculation that Michael Jackson died and it turned out to be true,” I fire back. “Let me go talk to her, I’ll see what she says—“

“That’s just the thing; we don’t want you to go talk to her.” Now I feel like the tables have turned, and I’m the smart guy standing amidst a table of morons. I stare at Joss, bewildered. He shakes his head. “Listen, if that stuff isn’t true, I don’t want to bring it up, and I especially don’t want to bring it up if it is true. Scarlett will talk about it if she sees it necessary, and she’ll do it on her own terms.”

I look around the table for some sort of moral support—I hold my gaze the longest on Evans, because I know that if anyone will side with me when it comes to her, it would be him—but I’m left empty handed. So, I resign and sink back down into the stupid chair, trapped in all of my thoughts. All of which, just so happen to revolve around the one person that has yet to return.

During the next half of interviews, I pick up on all the little things that I hadn’t the first go round. Of course I’m paired with Scarlett, and I feel like I’m psychoanalyzing every little snip of body language and every syllable she utters. Work Scarlett comes back out to play, but it’s almost like she’s forcing that smile on her face. Her sulking is more evident, the weariness about her more prevalent than any of ours. Sure, we’re all tired, but she seems like she’s drained, like something’s sucked the life right out of her. There’s not much of a glimmer in her eye, she slumps her shoulders down each time interviewers rotate out, and she gnaws at her bottom lip whenever she’s not talking. The signs are there, now that I’m looking for them. And I feel myself bursting at the seams.

Fuck Joss.

The interviews finally end, and we’re dismissed to carry on with our lives—or at least, what little remnants of one we can keep intact while on this press tour. I know that I only have one opportunity to catch Scarlett, and I waste no time in seizing it. She’s maneuvering her way through the small group of people when I grab a hold of her hand. She spins around, eyes wide in alert, before realizing that it’s only me. “Jeremy,” she whispers, sounding defeated. “I’ve got to go.”

“Please,” I beg. “Just…let me take you back to the hotel.”

I can see her contemplating it, wheels turning in her head. I offer up a hopeful smile, in an attempt to sway her. It seems to work, to my surprise. She complies wordlessly, her arm falling limp and her hand resting in mine loosely as I lead her to the car. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Evans giving me some sort of look, as if he’s trying to stop me, and I can already hear Joss’ berating in my head. It doesn’t faze me enough to let her go.

The ride back to the hotel is silent, mostly because I’m not sure of how to spring the conversation on her. She’s sitting as far away from me as humanly possible, staring out the window or glued to the bright glow of her cell phone. I try to glance over as discreetly as I can and see what or who she’s talking to, but it’s near impossible. Scarlett’s great at keeping secrets.

More wordless journeys lead us up to the door of her hotel suite, and I watch as she swipes in the card key, light flashing green. She twists the handle, shooting me a glance over her shoulder before pushing the door in. I grab it right before she’s able to slam it in my face, pushing it back out far enough so I can slip in. Scarlett looks at me horrified as I close the door behind me—evidently, she wasn’t expecting to have to keep me as company as long as she now was.

“Look,” I say in one quick breath. “I just…I need to know if what they’re saying is true.” She cocks an eyebrow at me, and I sigh. “Everyone says I shouldn’t ask you because they’re scared to ask you and they’re scared not to but I’m not because I care about you, Scarls—“

“Jeremy, spit it out,” she cuts in.

“Are you getting a divorce?” I spit out, regretting the words that fall out the minute they spill over. She doesn’t look as horrified as I expected for her to, but she sure doesn’t look too pleased that I had the audacity to ask such a thing. “I—I’m sorry, I don’t mean to overstep my boundaries—“

“Yeah, but that’s what you do,” she explains, leaning up against the wall and crossing her arms over her chest. “You overstep your boundaries, overstay your welcome; everything you do, Renner, is always taking it too far. You should have just let this one lie.” The look on her face tells me I’ve screwed up. “Now, if you don’t mind…”

“Whoa whoa whoa, wait a second,” I rush out. “Scarlett, I didn’t mean to…pry, I just, you know how much I care about you. I just want to know if there’s anything I can do to help you, make you feel better, I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Her eyes narrow at me. “Help me? You can help me by staying out of it, Jeremy.”

“I’m not trying to offend you here; I just want to know the truth! I want to know what’s going on with you, that’s all.”

“What’s going on with me,” she says coolly, peeling herself off the wall and stepping towards me. “Is something that I’ve decided to keep between me and the people involved. And you aren’t one of them. And if you ‘care’ about me, you’d respect that.”

I step back, holding my hands up. I had expected a more docile response, but it was clear that whatever was bothering her was enough to make her hostile. She wasn’t in the mood to talk, evidently. “All I needed to hear,” I respond slowly. The longer I stay here, the worse I seem to be making things, so I let that be my exit line. I reach for the door handle, turning around to make my way back to my room for the evening. “Night, Scarlett.”

I’m twisting down on the door handle when I hear her swallow. “Yes,” she utters out. I pause, slowly turning back around to face her. Her eyes are closed and it looks like all of the color has drained from her face.

Taking my hand off the door, I exhale slowly. “I—I really don’t know what to say, Scar,” I admit. “I’m sorry.”

She dispels my apology with the wave of her hand. “Don’t be,” she insists. “It’s not your…don’t be.”

The way her voice fell off the end and came back in a strangled knot puzzles me, but I pretend to overlook it for the sake of the situation at hand. “When?” I finally settle on asking, one of the million questions I have concerning this.

“Few weeks ago. It’s still a pretty new thing.”

“Why?” My questions are one-word-only and keep coming out of my mouth as if I’m spitting them out like poison.  _Way to go, Jeremy; way to handle this in the smoothest way possible._

Scarlett gives a small one-shouldered shrug. “Same reason it was last time, it just wasn’t working out.” She pauses for a moment, before speaking back up. “I love him, I really do…I just…I don’t know. Maybe married life isn’t for me after all,” she chuckles bitterly, and the pang in my heart almost makes me sick to my stomach.

“You deserve to be happy, sweetheart,” I tell her gently.

“Two marriages already, Jeremy,” she snaps. “I thoroughly doubt the third time will be a charm.” I stare at her for a second, trying to understand where she was coming from. She sighs, resting her head against the wall, and I can see that her eyes are clenched shut for a reason. She’s trying to hold back the tears.

“Scarlett, it’s not the end of the world…”

“Yeah, that’s because you don’t understand it. This will be my second divorce, Jeremy.  _Second._  Do you…do you even know what that takes out of a person, going through just one divorce?”

“I think I could,” I respond coolly, and her eyes fly open.

“Jer…I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

“Don’t apologize,” I tell her. “This isn’t about me.”

Scarlett reaches up and rubs underneath her eyes, the edge of her hand coming away shinier than it was. “I just…you have people tell you how sexy you are, or how beautiful they find you, and they act like you were carved out of the sun, but you just can’t find love anywhere. I mean, what good does being sexy do for me? Obviously not enough, Jeremy,” she whimpers, and I can feel my heart cracking inside my chest. “It’s not enough. And I’m starting to think I’m just not enough.”

It’s clear to me that this is more than just the divorce. It’s a matter of no longer feeling good enough, like she’s damaged goods and that she’ll always be the wasted version of herself. Scarlett doesn’t believe in herself or her capacity to hold onto love anymore, and nothing angers me more than that. I want to scream at her that there’s nothing wrong with her, that she’ll always be perfect to me, but that would be overstepping just about every line there ever was. I choose my next words carefully and as quick as I can, before she completely breaks down. “Hey hey hey,” I intervene quickly, reaching out and grabbing one of her shoulders. “Don’t say that. You are, Scarlett, it’s not you. It’s him.”

“Oh yeah?” she laughs bitterly, slowly sinking down to the floor. “Famous last words.”

Another crack. I attempt to straighten myself out as I open my mouth once again. “Listen to me, okay? You are beautiful, Scarlett, that’s never going to stop anyone from loving you. Your looks are just a…a bonus, as to what’s inside. And if someone doesn’t see that, if they only marry you because you’re a pretty face or they don’t appreciate what’s on the inside, then they’re the biggest idiot to walk the face of the goddamn planet. Even bigger than me.” I crack a smile in hopes of making her smile. The corners of her lips turn up slightly, but not enough to qualify as a legitimate smile. I look over the technicalities and consider it a victory.

She sniffles, wiping her eyes again with the back of her hand. “You know, I never did understand why you got divorced in the first place. You always know how to treat ‘em right, Renner.”

I shrug. “Unlike you, sweetheart, I’m  _really_  not destined for the married life. I’m better off running around, doing my own thing and acting like a jackass all the while.”

“That’s a lie, and you know it,” she accuses.

“Maybe,” I respond, stooping down to her level and sitting down beside her. “Maybe it’s just the matter of finding the right person.”

Scarlett nods slowly. “Ah, well, let me know how that goes, and if you succeed, ask if she has a brother.”

“You’re going to be fine, sweetheart,” I reassure her, looking over in her direction. “I don’t ever worry about you finding someone or living a happy fairytale ending. You’ll find it.”

“Sometimes I wonder if I’ve already found it, and I just dismissed all of it.” Those words freeze me right down to the core, and I struggle to hear the next words that she says, due to the blood pounding in my ears. “You know what they say, you always overlook the happy ending you’re meant to have because you dismiss it as something that’s just a good friendship or you’re too scared for it. Maybe he ended it because he knew I wasn’t happy. I loved him, but I loved someone else.” I’m choking on the very oxygen that I’m still trying to continue inhaling. Sometimes, Scarlett can be good and cryptic when she wants to, and other times, her enigmatic ways are incredibly obvious. The shoe she’s waving around is sliding right onto my foot like Cinderella’s glass slipper did, and I swallow the newly formed lump in my throat.

“That uh…that could be it,” I reason, stammering like the fool I probably am coming off as.

Scarlett sighs, looking over at me. “Are you really just that clueless?” she quips, the glimmer of her usual self—the Scarlett I’m accustomed to, anyways—shining back through.

I exhale loudly, like the breath I’ve been holding in was killing me slowly. She continues on. “Ever since I heard you had got that divorce, it was like something just…I don’t know, snapped inside me. Like this was my second chance. And I couldn’t keep him tied to me, I couldn’t just betray him and hurt him like that. It would be less collateral damage if I broke it off before I saw you again.”

I shake my head in confusion, blinking several times as I stare at the wall ahead. “So, you’re saying…” I begin warily.

“You may or may not have been a factor, yes,” she admits.

I glance over at her briefly. “You know, you could have always told me you had a crush on me,” I tell her. She hits me in the arm, hard. I rub at it, face twisting into a grimace. “I also probably had that coming.”

“That you did.” She scoots closer to me, leaning over and nestling her head on top of my shoulder. I rest a hand on top of her leg, moving my upper body slightly so her head is now resting in the crook of my neck. “Jer?” she asks softly.

“Yeah, Scarls?”

There’s a silence, and I feel something hot roll onto the fabric of my shirt and soak through. I figure that it’s an escaped tear, thoughts confirmed by her sniffling. “You’re not mad?”

“When have I ever been mad at you?”

She doesn’t respond. Instead, she silently lets the last few tears fall out. And by the time they’ve had time to dry on my shirt, the both of us feel a little bit better—not enough for her to walk chin up the whole way through and certainly not enough for me to embrace the newfound confusion stirring up in my stomach, but enough thanks to the knowledge that we’ve got each other.


End file.
